I’ve a feeling that if Diablo 4 had been released prior to this one, it wouldn’t have anywhere NEAR this amount of backlash.
It seems to me a lot of people were expecting a “modern” system because they’re of the belief that subsequent releases should always improve upon the latest ones… instead of prior installments being judged upon their own merits.
Pretty sure diablo 3 made it clear to everyone that “modern” and “improvement” are two different things
Failed so bad it’s one of the top selling games of all time.
D2R is not a remastered, with the queue, game crashes, loading screens, ninja nerfs …
I do agree it was adverstised as a remaster, but, they could have added some of the mods ppl wanted, like stackable runes/gems, more stash space (wich to a certain degree they did), I’m not asking for inifint stash space, but rather 10 tabs was good enough. People are making 20 chars just to get ahold of all the runes/gems they have!
I don’t think anyone was surprised that the sequel to the biggest PC game of all time sold a lot of games. Unfortunately D4 will sell a fraction of what D3 did since D3 killed all hype the franchise ever had. Also I think failure might be a good way to describe having to completely redo the core gameplay systems in the expansion because of how much it was hated.
That’s why it still sold 3x copies than D2 did after all the “hate” was well known (about 8x total).
Some of you will be really shocked when you see Diablo Immortal and D4 financials to learn the player base is much larger than D2, USA, Y2K players.
Alote of my friends and I bought D2R not on the release day. We bought it a few days later, when there were a few reviews and Videos. AND then came the server crashes and so on.
I feel my self betrayed by the changes after the release. I woudnt buy this game when I knew they would put in queues (wich also was implemented in alote of mods/ what they took pretty fast for D2 “REMASTERED”) and other stuff after a few days or week of release.
Well, lets revive this thread.
So ladder will come and we get more Balance Changes and new items. So, step by step 
you know what I especially like about those “purists” that always shout out that good old false reality statement: “Everything used to be better before!”. Gotta love it. (sarcasm) Listen guys, take off your nostalgia glasses, the game has been constantly rebalanced and changed in the last 15+ years.Please spare people the nonsense that D2 is perfect the way it is. Those “purists” probably never played back then otherwise you would know how much a patch actually made a difference. Remember v 1.9? I do. 1.7? yep. we have seen that game go through dramatic changes over the years. Stop whining. Be glad they do something.
Yes they remastered d2 not remade it. But nothing stops them from updating the old game, thus the remastered d2 got updates.
Here is the truth, or lets say my opinion 
Vicarious Visions was hired to Remaster D2. The people working on D2R at Vicarious Visions love D2 and wanted to make a true Remaster of D2. The game looked very good which surprised Management at Activision-Blizzard. Blizzard having trouble left and right due to the rotten culture and highly cancerous Management (Activision mostly, with some Cancerous infiltrators at Blizzard Management which were also placed there by Activision to squash dissent and lack of obedience demanded by Activision.
Long Story Short, Vicarious Visions was bought by Activision and integrated at Blizzard due to their good work on D2R. After integrating Vicarious Visions at Blizzard, the original D2R Team (Vicarious Visions) was then “infiltrated” by Blizzard Employees (Mostly former D3 and other Franchise-Folk). Bored out of their skull and desperately trying “to find work” so they don’t get canned, started pushing the idea to turn D2R into a Remake (Something to do and thus being needed as an employee in difficult Lay-Off-Times). In part because they knew D2R would be received well and thus wanted their name on the project and on their LinkedIn profiles in the future, and in part also because Blizzard is having massive issues with their current Projects. D4 has issues, other games are having issues and then all the other countless scandals.
The real reason why D2R is now receiving massive changes is because Activision thinks D2R can make them more money going forward by adding and changing everything about it “to keep it fresh”. Christmas time is the prime time to push a product, and by forcing updates onto D2R, it keeps the game in the news cycle and thus in the minds of gamers, and thus new customers. Blizzard feels it must comply and also pushes themselves because they need to deliver products with continuous upgrades like Heartstone etc. since there is nothing else Blizzard can launch any time soon.
At first D2R was misleadingly marketed as a Remaster, as they had no idea how many people may or may not buy D2R. Few sales = keep it a Remaster, Massive Sales = Turn it into a Remake. D2R ended up so popular that the devs said launch day squashed their estimates multiple times over. Activision could literally smell money in that moment, so guess what, the best way to make money is to push new and more content and force it onto D2R, and make sure some people wanted D2R to be a MOD of D2 and not a Remaster, so they can blame “but the players really wanted changes…”.
To bad Vicarious Visions was swallowed by Activision-Blizzard, because everything Activision/Blizzard touches these days becomes garbage in the long run. You’ll see when D4 comes out…
Well said sir.
Most of your post was spot on, but the last needed emphasizing…